long debates on whether I was "guilty" or not. They had accepted society's

evaluation of themselves.

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But if they only debated, how my heterosexual friends sweat blood wrestĺing with incredulity! This just couldn't be so! Innocent people just don't get into such a situation! For to be accused is to be guilty. These, of course, ceased to be friends by mutual consent. Others were outraged at such obvious framing and became even stauncher supporters than many homosexuals involved. They realized that this could happen to anyone. There is a certain smugness in many of our own number regarding arrest which I myself shared until that badge loomed in my face and the handcuffs locked my wrists together. We homosexuals have said in effect: "I never expose myself to danger. I never speak to strangers, go to questionable places or do anything that might give me away. Those who do, ask for it and deserve what they get." This assumes that everyone is arrested in "questionable" places by total strangers under even stranger circumstances and that they made the dangerous gesture themselves. It assumes that they know everything to be known about their friends, that their names, addresses and phone numbers could never fall into the wrong hands because their friends are never arrested either, and that no police officer could ever break into their social circle. It assumes that there are no homosexual or bisexual police, that officers can always be spotted and that they never use illegal means to make an arrest. Finally, it assumes that these admirably careful

persons never make a culpable gesture, have no mannerisms that could be construed as deviate, are totally unknown in homosexual circles, and that there are certain places where certain behavior is safe and acceptable in spite of the fact that all homosexual acts are legally criminal and socially taboo.

For this reason, many of my own harrassed minority would have nothing to do with the case of a person who was so foolish as to let himself get arrested. It would certainly never happen to them. Making the most elating and at the same time depressing remark during the campaign, a friend of mine said: "To me, you are unquestionably guilty of the charges, but I shall fight it with you be-

cause the law and not the act is unnatural." To be innocent and yet not be able to convince even your own firm constituents, carries a peculiar agony that perhaps explains the tone of indignation in this account.

However the circumstances were certainly typical and the design so familiar that I blame no one for disbelief. I was looking for a movie to fill in an empty evening. I found later that people with this pastime in mind are never as discriminating as I claimed to be. Two movies that I passed were uninviting and, on the way to a third up the street, I was unwise enough to use a public rest room in a park. This, too, was a mistake: respectable people don't use these civic conveniences under any circumstances. Having done nothing that the city architect didn't have in mind when he designed the place, I left followed by a big, rough looking character who ap-

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